人はゼンなのか、アクなのか @shimayuzuru - Tumblr Blog

Any more of this, and he might go insane.

Yayoi pushed himself—his useless, wheelchair-bound husk of a self—around the hospital, bored out of his mind. Asaba Yuzu had stopped coming to visit, which he had been grateful for, the first few days of her disappearance; but Akihisa and Mahiru were never around, and the silence he shared with Yuzu had been replaced with the low drone of electricity, the buzzing that accompanied the white lights of his hospital room. All day, he was surrounded by sterile white walls and men and women who didn’t know a thing about him.

And he was broken now.

What a thought.

Pushing himself along, Yayoi saw, from a distance, a man standing down the hallway who was staring across a glass window. He was just a non-descript looking man. There was nothing particularly interesting about him, except the intensity of his gaze as he stared past that window.

Yayoi pushed himself down the hallway until, finally, he was next to the man, and he could see what he was looking at.

It was the NICU. There were more than a dozen babies, tiny, little things, each of them resting in a little incubator and hooked up to tubes and cords. Some of them barely looked human. Too small, oddly colored. Bound to machines.

“That’s a lot of fucking babies, huh?”

It was such a strange thing to hear that Yayoi looked over at the other man and, before he could stop himself, croaked out, “What?” He hadn’t spoken in days. His voice sounded odd even to his own ears. Inhuman, almost.

“Sorry, I just—I’ve been looking at them for days now. And there’s so many of them in there.”

“Mm.”

“Most of them are only in there for a couple hours, maybe a day or two,” said the man, rubbing his eyes. “You’d think they’d all blend together. But…I know I’m going to sound like a crazy dad, but I can always tell which one is my daughter just with a glance.”

They did sort of blend together.

Because they were all so ugly.

“Yeah?” Yayoi said.

He wasn’t really interested, not really. As far as he was concerned, the mystery was solved, he knew why this man looked the way he did, and the only thing Yayoi could say about this whole thing was that he had never seen uglier things in all his life, not even Asaba Yuzu.

“She’s there,” said the man.

Yayoi followed his finger to a particular baby, and he blinked. Out of all the motionless, silent infants, there was one, tinier even than all the rest, who was meeting his stare and had its fist tightly clenched as though taking offense to the thoughts in his head about its ugliness. When Yayoi brought his face closer to the window for a closer look, the baby, also, seemed to squirm closer in defiance.

This one was funny.

Now it was glaring at him, like the stupid thing thought it was any better off than him. They were both confined to a metal trap.

“She’s always throwing a ruckus, but she’s my little fighter…”

Yayoi…Akihisa…Mahiru. Kasugas are fighters. And you three, you three are my little fighters.

“…What’s her name?” Yayoi asked. He pressed a finger against the glass, and the baby raised its hand up as though to meet him.

“Sora.”

~At first there is no path—but then people pass that way, and a path is made.

#seizenron

Taking the bow and arrow, he slowly, slowly walked to the shai. He took a deep breath. His body turned toward the target. His feet spread. His hands raised the bow. His fingers nocked the arrow to the drawstring, and Yayoi pulled back. It was hard. It wasn’t any easier than the last time he had tried; but that was fine. No matter what came easily or not, no matter what he could or could not do—he was still a kyudoka, and he would always be a kyudoka.

Yayoi released his arrow, the twang of the drawstring reverberating through his ears; then he shot a second, and a third, and a fourth.

He released a long, slow breath.

He hadn’t realized he’d been holding onto that breath for so long.

After a long moment, Yayoi lowered his bow. It was time to collect the arrows. Sora stepped forward to offer him help, but he shook his head; he would do this on his own. Stepping out onto the snow-covered yamichi, Yayoi saw the footsteps that marked Sora’s earlier path. He followed them. None of his arrows had struck the target. They hadn’t flown any more than half the distance toward the targets, but he had done it, and that was enough.

On his way back to the dojo, his arrows clutched tightly in his hand, Yayoi looked up at the sky. It had stopped snowing. The moon had emerged from behind the clouds.

Sora helped him up, back inside the warmth of the dojo. Yayoi passed to her the bow and the arrows, and he felt, suddenly, that that relic of his life, which for so long had been frozen in time—locked away, in the dungeons of a crumbling castle—had finally been resolved, freed, from the hollow places he had buried them inside himself; that he, himself, could finally climb out from that shadow, back to his home and his family. Yayoi looked again at Kasuga Tooru’s memorial, and this time, he found that he could meet his grandfather’s eyes.

As Yayoi made his way once more to the judge’s seat and Sora took up her place again, ready to draw her bow, she smiled.

“Thank you for your instruction, Yayoi-sensei.”

~At first there is no path—but then people pass that way, and a path is made.

#seizenron #its ok man its because her bow is too short for u

It was little wonder that students were leaving the dojo. Hisashi had made it clear from the start: Reputation was important. Image was important. Hisashi never outright said something so gauche, but Kousuke could see it in the way he drew his bow, the way he shot his arrow, the way he lived. He had never presented himself as anything but perfect. As though he were a world apart—Hisashi was above the dust and toil of mundane, pedestrian life, above dust and dirt and pain. It was what had drawn so many to him. Hisashi had shown them an escape.

It had drawn Kousuke to him.

Yuzu was a far cry from that. Never mind looking like Hisashi, like a proper kyudoka; Yuzu didn’t even look like she could take care of herself. From the moment they met, Kousuke had expected nothing from Asaba Yuzu; but even then, he had been disappointed. She really was nothing like Hisashi. Not even a pale imitation. She was something wholly separate, and, Kousuke had thought, wholly incompatible with what he knew as kyudo.

~We are sun and moon, dear friend.

#seizenron

moving so havent had much time to work QQ plus our dog is sick:(

comms

#too much dnd I TIREDY

Everything looked the same, but it was all different, all wrong.

#seizenron

gus

#not fring #tempest #kaiserklee #was gonna post with saul but life is so busy now QQ

some commissions :>

Yayoi had held that stifled breath of rage for so long that, should he explain it in words, should he release it, should he be believed, despair might rush into the vacuum at last and crush him—or there might be nothing left at all, and he would be empty. Kousuke knew that feeling well. When Hisashi took him away from his family, he had been freed from constant fear and wariness, freed from the tension that, until then, had never left his body and soul; but without it, he became an empty shell, a vacant house with unlocked doors—free for anyone to claim as their own, as Hisashi had done.

Yayoi didn’t want that, and Kousuke wouldn’t do it to him.

~You never loved your friends, as I shall love my foes.

#seizenron

Yayoi reached into his pocket and took out the switchblade he had taken as his prize, and he flicked it open. It was easier to use than a bow. More direct. More deadly. Yayoi looked out and saw that his arrow had misfired and struck nothing—but the blade wouldn’t fail. And right now, that was what he needed: destructive, aimless rage, enough to protect Akihisa and Mahiru, not the precise spirit that Tooru had taught him, not the pure heart and meaningful purpose that Tooru had wanted to see in him.

Kyudo wasn’t his life anymore.

~Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

#seizenron